Tag Archives: Stand Your Ground

What is it about the Trayvon Martin case that a lot of people just don’t get? I was reading a news story about an old white man who was beaten by a group of 6 black boys after saying to them…Remember Trayvon Martin. And the 6 black youths were arrested and are now in jail awaiting trial.

But, yet people continuously want to point out Al Sharpton’s involvement with the Tawana Brawley fiasco or the Duke LaCrosse case. As if these two incidents are the quintessential equivalents of the Trayvon Martin case. Or somehow because a black person made false claims in these two cases, the case against Zimmerman is either false or somehow irrelevant.

And people are also making other comments about the 6 black youths vs. white man such as “if this were the other way around, it would be seen as a hate crime” or “Were is the FBI? Jesse? Sharpton? and every one else? Rally to take place at the Toledo Police station Monday april 9th at noon to demand justice in this case please be there. Please email me at mikeXXXX@yahoo.com if you plan to attend!”

OK. Who reading this is wondering to themselves at this very moment “what lack of justice are they speaking of that needs to be had in this case?” What exactly is it that is causing a problem for Mike shown above who is looking to go to a rally for justice in a case? It can’t be the fact that the alleged perpetrators are in jail, it can’t be that the wheels of justice are turning and quite quickly I might add. So is the only thing that would spell justice for Mike, would be for black people to rally around this white man and denounce the actions of the 6 black youths? Something he obviously has yet to do for Trayvon.

OK, Mike, for what it is worth…I think that it was horrible for those black kids to beat up this white man for whatever reasons they have. I hope that when all the evidence is revealed that it doesn’t show that they felt threatened when the man said to them to remember Trayvon Martin. Which he claimed was his way to, as he said; to show them we are all on the same side.

Because, unfortunately, if some white man said that to me, I would be fearful he was planning to make ME the next Trayvon Martin. And I would interpret him to mean DEAD. And thus might feel the need to protect myself from this could/would be Zimmerman knockoff. So, I guess that could be an excuse for them. Maybe, but we see there is no lack of excuses for Zimmerman as well.

I guess he (Mike) wants to see hate crime charges brought. That is fine “if” that is what he wants. But, at least he has solace in seeing the wheels of justice moving, the alleged perpetrators in jail and an actual investigation being done. And all this being done WITHOUT the victim’s family going to extreme measures of rallying a public outrage to get the same justice. Somehow this white victim just has the luxury of this justice automatically.

I would love for Mike there to show me the one case where a white person be it man, woman or child who was killed by a black man and that black man was allowed to go home WITH the murder weapon the same night as the killing, and no further questions asked by the police of that case. And the case closed after 7 hours of investigation that did NOT include any forensic, DNA, witness statements nor any other form of evidence outside of the perpetrators lone statement? I would LOVE for someone to dig that case up.

For anyone who is confused as to WHY black people are on board this case, it is because the crime was just set aside and no one wanted to look into it any further. This man whether white or Hispanic or as he classified himself white Hispanic, man killed an innocent unarmed person without any investigation to corroborate his story was allowed to go free. And the police had attempted to force the parents into accepting that the man killed their unarmed son in self-defense without a shred of evidence to back that statement up.

I don’t think that anyone would sit idly by and allow that to go unchallenged if that were their child or if this was some white kid walking in a predominantly black area and the black man were the alleged perpetrator. That is why this is so raw for the black community. This is NOT the first case of an unarmed black person shot dead at the hands of a person who did not get arrested, charged or eventually ruled innocent of any wrong doing.

And it is frankly unbelievable to me that anyone even needs to spell this out to them. I can’t believe that it is so hard to fathom why black people are calling for justice. Why is it so hard for some to identify with an obvious injustice no matter the race of the people? If the people heard this travesty without hearing the race of the people would they have a hard time understanding the outrage then?

Is this a case of willful ignorance in order to justify a group mentality that has always deemed the black man a threat no matter what situation we see them in? We have to keep black people under control no matter what the cost, situation or outcome of that situation. A lot of white people thought Rodney King was in control even though he was surrounded by 7 police officers who were beating him with batons as he lie on the ground. And a jury still believed that he could have stopped them at any moment.

A woman named Tarika Wilson was shot to death THROUGH her one year old baby and the cops who did it were deemed to have acted appropriated because of course this black woman holding a baby was still a threat to the police even though again unarmed. How many times do we need to see this very crime perpetrated upon members of the black community while those from the predominant white community make statements that it was understandable based on the so called fact that the white/non-black person pulling the trigger was in fear of an unarmed black who supposedly had all the control.

We allow the dominant predominantly white community to cry that blacks are so scary it is understandable that they pull the trigger when facing a black person in any type situation even if the story sound as outlandish as Zimmerman’s tall tales. When does the opposite occur in that blacks become so fearful of white people that we jump the gun in defense of ourselves against them?

Would this new reversal of fear be acceptable and we can then justify doing nothing at all or hearing about nothing being done and have so many members of society agree that it was justifiable to do nothing. Would we ever then see the members of predominantly white society see a case where Zimmerman is black and Trayvon is white and then tell the outraged people to just have a look at whatever case is out there at the moment which shows a white person killing or harming a black person and ask them why they aren’t outraged over that as well; even when the cases are ridiculously different.

It won’t happen because somehow we are again under a group mentality that white people are NOT a monolith. If one commits a crime, doesn’t mean I must fear them ALL. Yet, blacks do not, and have never gotten that same consideration. And in fact we deem blacks as negative actors even when the perpetrators are white. We have so many Susan Smith’s, Bonnie Sweeten’s, Ashley Todd’s, Bethany Storro’s, Michael Daragjati’s, Mary Turcotte’s, Charles Stuart’s and Brian Wells’ out there to feed this very stereotype for the masses like crack addicts scurrying for the last rock of crack.

How do we stop this? How do we back away from the precipice that we see ourselves on at this very moment? We all need to take a step back and understand that it is beyond time to start seeing things through the eyes of our black citizens as we already do those of our predominantly white majority.